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DFA Urges Members to Support Stacey Abrams for Governor of Georgia

May 22, 2017 - 4:57 pm

Democracy for America will begin mobilizing its members to pledge their support for Stacey Abrams if she runs for Governor of Georgia. In the event that Abrams moves from exploring a run to entering the race, this will provide her with a ready base of volunteers and grassroots donors to fuel her campaign on day one. DFA has 32,379 members in Georgia. After the national progressive group endorsed Jon Ossoff for Congress in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in March, its members contributed more than $55,000 to his campaign.

Democracy for America Executive Director Charles Chamberlain:

“Donald Trump won Georgia with less than 51% of the vote. Georgia is on the cusp of turning blue thanks in no small part to the efforts of Stacey Abrams, who founded an organization that registered more than 200,000 voters of color in the state between 2014 and 2016.

“Stacey Abrams is undoubtedly the best candidate to lead Georgia. She has a bold progressive vision of the state which includes ending generational poverty across Georgia. And as the House Minority Leader in the Georgia General Assembly, she has won victories in some of Georgia’s most important progressive battles, like stopping attempts to roll back reproductive healthcare and preventing tax hikes on the poor.

“As a Georgia resident myself, I know how excited our members are by the prospect of Stacey Abrams running for Governor here. Winning the Governorship will require a progressive leader like Stacey who can turn out voters who are ready for a strong contrast to the Republican agenda. If Stacey Abrams enters the ring, she can count on us to be in her corner.” - Charles Chamberlain, Executive Director of Democracy for America

Stacey Abrams has been the Minority Leader of the Georgia General Assembly since 2011, and was first elected to that body in 2007. She is the founder of the New Georgia Project, which registered more than 200,000 voters of color in the state between 2014 and 2016. She has earned degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale Law School.

Earlier this month, DFA launched a similar effort to support Ben Jealous if he runs for Governor of Maryland, with 3,365 people having pledged to pitch in, volunteer, and organize to help him win so far.

Democracy for America is a member-driven, people-powered progressive PAC with more than one million members nationwide committed to taking on income inequality, money in politics, and structural racism.

Since its 2004 founding, DFA members have raised and contributed more than $40 million and made more than 11.1 million volunteer calls to help successfully elect 907 progressive candidates nationwide.

That episode and others offered clues to how Ocasio-Cortez and her social media practices fit into a national legislature that’s slowly becoming younger, less male and more diverse. The approach Ocasio-Cortez is modeling — and the political world is studying — gives her a measure of control by communicating directly with constituents and responding to critics in close to real time.

“She knows how to navigate this space in a way that others don’t,” said Yvette Simpson, incoming CEO of Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee. Also, Simpson pointed out, “She’s not accountable to that power structure” in Congress. “She’s accountable to the group that put her there.”